At least 79 educational institutions around the world have banned the use of smartphones in classrooms due to the growing concerns regarding their effects on students’ learning and privacy. There is no explicit legislation or policy regarding smartphone usage in educational institutions in India as of now.
By the end of 2023, 60 education systems (30 percent of all registered education systems globally) managed to introduce special laws or regulations that prohibited smartphones in classrooms, according to the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring (GEM) team. With another 19 added by the end of 2024, this had risen to a total of 79 (40 percent). Apart from the phone ban at other levels of education, lower secondary schools in France have
suggested the “digital break.” However, Saudi Arabia lifted its ban, following complaints of a medical nature from the disability organizations. Elementary and secondary schools in Zhengzhou city in China additionally implemented a ban on phone usage by requiring parents to sign a document stipulating that it is used for educational purposes.
“This mapping of educational systems does not include all sub-national jurisdictions in federal countries; four were taken into severe examination. Some territories, like New South Wales and South Australia, implemented bans in Australia, while in Spain, all but three of the 17 autonomous communities introduced same bans (Basque Country, La Rioja, Navarre),” a GEM official said in an interview with the PTI. “20 out of 50 states in the US have bans with some very specific schemes from Phone-Free School Act in California to a ban on the use of cell phones in K-12 classrooms in Florida, a ban on students’ use of portable wireless devices in Indiana, and another ban in Ohio,” he further added.
In any case, one option for some of the new rules in the United States is to provide guidelines for use in the schools themselves to number the specific rules; for example, in Indiana, school boards are required to draw up a school-level rule that specifies whether students will be allowed to use their phones during lunch times and what punishment would be implemented for doing so. There are also glaring exceptions, for instance, Louisiana students who require educational accommodations and Ohio residents with conditions necessitating monitoring. In addition to outright prohibitions, some countries restrict the presence of certain applications in educational environments for privacy reasons. Google Workspace is banned in Denmark and France. In several German states, Microsoft products are not allowed in schools.
“A review has shown that some technologies can support some learning in some contexts but not with too much or inappropriate usage. Smartphones in a classroom are disruptions of learning. A study of 14 countries from pre-primary to higher education found that they distracted learners from learning,” says the UNESCO report.
Read More:
Parenting in the Smartphone Era: Effects on Child Development
Study: Excessive smartphone use may put teens’ mental health in danger
What are the effects of smartphones and technology on Children?
Leave feedback about this